Sigma Designs Announces Winners of Z-Wave Smart Home Maker Challenge

Fremont, CA – December 21, 2017 – Sigma Designs® (NASDAQ: SIGM), a leading provider of intelligent system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for connected smart TV platforms and smart home IoT, today announces three winners of the Z-Wave Smart Home Maker Challenge. The competition, hosted by Sigma and the Maker Share community platform from Make:, a leader of the Maker movement, was announced in September 2017.

All eligible submissions to the contest received a free Raspberry Pi equipped with the Z-Wave Developers kit and one Z-Wave certified device to help contestants build a smart home application to turn their dream smart home experience into a reality. Sigma Designs is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s contest:

Grand prize:Cameron Henkel – Aging in Place with Z-Wave: Remote Medication Dispenser – Using Z-Wave, Cameron designed a remote, smart medication dispenser that could be pre-loaded with the proper medication doses that would then be delivered on a set schedule to the user but also alert a caretaker if a dose was missed. As the grand-prize winner, Cameron will receive a hosted-trip to CES in Las Vegas, January 9-12, 2018. His smart home project will be showcased in the Z-Wave Alliance Smart Home Pavilion, located in the Sands (Booth 41717).

“I was initially interested in entering the challenge because I thought it would let me explore an area of computing and tech I wasn’t familiar with,” said Cameron Henkel, grand prize winner. “I really like working with the Z-Wave technology because it gave me my first taste of developing for the Internet of Things and the considerations involved. With the experiences from this project I’m eager to continue working on smart home applications in the future.”

2nd Place:Soren Daugaard – Smart Home Automation Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Soren entered the competition with the goal to design a smart home experience. Rather than rely on a remote or smartphone to trigger specific smart home events, Soren sought out to create CLAIRE (a Continuously Learning AI Rules Engine) that would learn his habits and automatically adjust his smart home based off the data collected by sensors around his home and the time of day. As the second-place winner, Soren will receive $2,000 worth of certified Z-Wave devices from secondary sponsor Zwaveproducts.com

3rd Place: Tim Sills– IoT Sentry: Tim created an indoor/outdoor monitoring solution using off the shelf sensors and Z-Wave technology to create the IoT Sentry. The IoT Sentry houses Z-Wave sensors, is Internet accessible, and integrates with online service providers to trigger actions. It can lock/unlock doors, turn on and off lights, control water systems, send SMS messages, write to Google Docs, and control devices outside of the Z-Wave eco-system. As the third-place winner, Tim will receive $1,000 worth of certified Z-Wave devices from secondary sponsor Zwaveproducts.com.

“The contest was a great success and we received so many excellent submissions,” said Carsten Steffensen, Moderator of the Public Z-Wave Forum for Sigma Designs. “We launched the contest to get more Makers accessing the Public Z-Wave specification to create unique and interesting Z-Wave applications. The community did not disappoint. Congratulations to our winners and a huge thank you to everyone who participated. Stay-tuned for similar competitions from us in the future.”